Mayhem on the Raritan, Stripers! 4-18/19 - NJFishing.com Your Best Online Source for Fishing Information in New Jersey

FASTEDDIE29 · #1 04-19-2020, 02:37 PM

Hit the river yesterday late morning looking for anything that wanted to eat. It was cold and cloudy with a stiff wind coming out of the north. Jumped in the river with the waders on and man I could feel the toes getting cold instantly. Gotta role with the punches. Tossed around some plastics first with nobody home. Out of the corner of my eye I see a splash. Switched up to a small plug and cracked a nice Striper on the 2nd cast with the plug. It was a short about 22-24 inches. This would be the smallest fish of the outing. While releasing the fish I start seeing more topwater eruptions up and down river and 10 feet in front of where I’m standing. I put 2 and 2 together and figured I was surrounded by a freshwater blitz of STRIPERS, oh boyyyyyy. Started casting towards the circles and had hook ups almost every cast from 11am til noon. All fish were between 24-28 inches with 4 fish being 28-30 and one river beast at 34 or better. This is nuts I’m saying to myself. I can’t believe I’m landing all these fish on this rod. I was using my St. Croix ultra lite with a Shimano Stradic 1000 size reel, 5 lb. Power Pro mainline and 12 lb. Berkley Vanish leader. This set up is lighter than most 5 foot Trout rods. Haha, intense! There’s a lull in the action and then 30 minutes later it picks back up. These fish are demolishing river Herring or something on top. Cast to the explosion, hook up, repeat. I couldn’t believe the action I had on this cold day in April. Wound up landing about 20-25 fish total from 11am-2pm when all the life seemingly disappeared. What a crazy midday blitz! I was smiling ear to ear walking out of there. HELL YESSSSS!!!

Decided to give it a go again today with some friends. We social distanced of course. As soon as we walk down we could see an explosion here and there but nothing ever developed. I got 2 more shorts around 24. Mikey got a nice keeper at 28. And this mystery dude that was down there managed a couple shorts as well. Wish we could’ve had yesterday’s action again. Lol! Can’t be greedy I guess. TIGHT LINEZ FELLAS!!!

thmyorke1 · #2 04-19-2020, 03:04 PM

Mmmm with all these spots closed, all these stripers really thought they could get away with entering the sweetwater zone without getting hooked? Nah!

eddie on the meat! Yea buddy

woohoo!